Region

BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON — The European Union on Tuesday agreed to review its cooperation deal with Israel over alleged human rights abuses in Gaza, the bloc's top diplomat Kaja Kallas said.

Kallas said Brussels was acting after "a strong majority" of its 27 member states backed the move, in a meeting of EU foreign ministers, in a bid to pressure Israel.

"What it tells is that the countries see that the situation in Gaza is untenable, and what we want is to really help the people, and what we want is to unblock the humanitarian aid so that it will reach the people," Kallas told journalists.

The United States has reached out to countries about accepting "voluntary" relocations of Palestinians fleeing Israel's offensive in Gaza, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday.

Israel has again warned the population of Gaza -- nearly entirely displaced since the war broke out over the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas -- to move ahead of a new offensive, which comes after it has blockaded food and supplies for more than two months.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly mused about displacing Gaza's two million people to make way for reconstruction.

Responding to a question in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said: "There's no deportation."

"What we have talked to some nations about is, if someone voluntarily and willingly says, I want to go somewhere else for some period of time because I'm sick, because my children need to go to school, or what have you, are there countries in the region willing to accept them for some period of time?" Rubio said.

"Those will be voluntary decisions by individuals," he said.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkely replied, if "there is no clean water, there is no food, and bombing is all around you, is that really a voluntary decision?"

Rubio did not say which countries had been approached but denied that Libya was among them.

NBC News, quoting anonymous sources, recently reported that Trump's administration is working on a plan to relocate permanently up to one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.

KHARTOUM — Clashes erupted on Tuesday in the outskirts of Sudan's capital as the army launched a "large-scale" offensive to dislodge the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces from its last positions in the area.

Explosions were heard in eastern Omdurman, an AFP correspondent reported, where the RSF still hold some positions after losing control of the capital, Khartoum.

The army said it began the push on Monday to retake the holdouts, where health authorities reported a deadly cholera outbreak.

"We are pressing a large-scale operation and we are close to clearing the whole of Khartoum state from the dirty thugs," said army spokesman Nabil Abdallah.

The war, which began in April 2023, pits the military, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the RSF, commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The latest violence comes as both sides seek to install rival governments.

On Monday, Burhan named former UN official Kamil Idris as prime minister, in what analysts see as an attempt to present a functioning civilian-led administration amid the ongoing war.

The African Union welcomed the appointment, calling it "a step toward inclusive governance" and expressing hope the move would "restore constitutional order and democratic governance".

Burhan also appointed two women as members of the ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council and stripped the body of powers to oversee the cabinet.

The moves were aimed at showing progress and appealing to the African Union after Sudan's membership was suspended in 2021, said analyst Kholood Khair.

Burhan wants to "maintain power but share liability... because everything is now blamed on him", as he seeks to consolidate control as he was still reeling from attacks on his wartime capital, Port Sudan, Khair said.

In April, the RSF said it would form its own government in territory under its control, though analysts say it is unlikely to win international backing.

 'Lives at risk' 

After a major battlefield victory in March, when the army recaptured most of Khartoum, the RSF this month launched deep attacks into army-held territory.

Long-range drone strikes blamed on the paramilitaries have targeted key infrastructure in army-held northeastern Sudan, including the wartime capital Port Sudan and power stations supplying electricity to millions.

Relegated to their last major bases in Salha, south of Omdurman, and Ombada to the west, the RSF has launched attacks across Khartoum, including drone strikes on three power stations that knocked out electricity in the capital last week.

Medical charity Doctors Withour Borders [MSF] reported the local water network had been forced out of service, risking the spread of cholera in the city as residents "will turn to different water sources".

Health ministry officials reported Tuesday 51 people have died from more than 2,300 cases reported in the past three weeks,  90 per cent of them in Khartoum state.

MSF on Sunday said the electricity blackout had disrupted healthcare at the city's major hospitals, amid fears of heightened civilian suffering.

"The recurrent attacks on critical infrastructure place civilian lives at risk, worsen the humanitarian crisis, and undermine basic human rights," UN human rights expert Radhouane Nouicer warned on Monday.

Since it began in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 13 million and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

It has also effectively carved Africa's third-largest country in two, with the army holding the centre, north and east while the RSF controls nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — After searching for years for his son and brothers following their arrest and disappearance by Bashar Assad's forces, Syrian real estate broker Maher Al Ton hopes he may finally get justice under the new authorities.

Last week, the government announced the creation of a national commission for missing persons and another for transitional justice.

That, along with the new rulers' arrests of alleged human rights violators linked to the ousted president's government, have made Ton feel hopeful.

"I feel like my son might still be alive," the 54-year-old said.

Assad's forces arrested Ton's son Mohammed Nureddin in 2018 near Damascus when he was just 17 years old, and has not been heard from since.

"I hope justice and fairness will prevail, and that they will reclaim our rights from the Syrian Arab Army which unjustly took our sons," he said, using the since disbanded military's official name.

Rights groups have welcomed the establishment of the justice commissions, but criticised the limiting of their scope to crimes committed by Assad's government.

Syria's war erupted in 2011 with a brutal government crackdown on democracy protesters that saw tens of thousands of people accused of dissent either jailed or killed.

Over time, armed groups emerged to battle Assad's military, including jihadist forces that committed atrocities.

During the war, rights groups accused the Hayat TahrirAl Sham (HTS) group, once affiliated with Al Qaeda, of abuses including unlawful detention and torture.

HTS spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad in December, and its leaders now form the core of the new government.

DiabSerriya, a co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, said that while Assad's government was "the biggest perpetrator of human rights violations", that does not "absolve the other parties in the conflict".

The new body, he said, "does not meet the aspirations of victims".

 'Criminals' 

Syria's new rulers have also arrested several former military and security officials accused of crimes.

This month, the interior ministry announced the arrest of Ghassan Youssef Ali, a doctor, saying he was "one of the officers working at the Tishreen Military Hospital during the era of the former regime".

AFP published in January a report about how detainees were beaten instead of treated at that hospital, the largest military health facility in Damascus.

In April, the security forces detained former intelligence officer Sultan al-Tinawi on accusations of war crimes.

According to Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, "fewer than 10" high-ranking officials have been arrested, with most fleeing the country in the wake of Assad's fall.

Others have gone into hiding in areas of the country that are home to a large Alawite community, whose members stem from the same religious minority as Assad.

Mohammad Al Abdallah, executive director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, said that "there are random arrests of individuals without a plan to search for the missing or to open central investigations into the crime of enforced disappearance, or even to protect mass graves".

Justice is 'essential' 

HibaZayadin, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, agreed.

"There isn't much transparency around what is taking place following these arrests," she said.

Abdallah said there appeared to be "two tendencies: to arrest some individuals, most of them lower-ranking, and to cooperate with other individuals".

Among those who evaded arrest, he said, was FadiSaqr, a former commander in the National Defence Forces, a pro-Assad militia.

Instead, he has joined a committee in the coastal province of Latakia tasked with building bridges between communities divided by years of violence and sectarian conflict.

Transitional justice processes in other parts of the world have been long and painful -- with some countries involving alleged abusers in their new systems to ensure a degree of continuity, and others choosing to turn over a new leaf.

In a report last week, Amnesty International said it was "essential" that those responsible for crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture face justice in fair trials.

"Delaying justice will only heighten the risk of further bloodshed," it added.

DUBAI — Rights group Amnesty International urged the United States on Monday to investigate possible violations of international law in a deadly strike on a migrant detention facility in rebel-held Yemen.

Last month's attack, which prompted international alarm and was part of the US bombardment campaign against the Iran-backed Huthis, killed 68 people held at a centre for irregular migrants in Saada, the rebel authorities said at the time.

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty's secretary-general, said that "the US attacked a well-known detention facility where the Huthis have been detaining migrants."

The dead were all migrants from African countries, the Huthis had said.

To Callamard, "the major loss of civilian life in this attack raises serious concerns about whether the US complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law."

"The US must conduct a prompt, independent and transparent investigation into this air strike," she added.

A US defence official had told AFP in the aftermath of the strike that the military launched "battle-damage assessment and inquiry" into "claims of civilian casualties related to the US strikes in Yemen".

Amnesty cited people who work with migrants and refugees in Yemen and visited two hospitals that treated the victims, saying that they had seen "more than two dozen Ethiopian migrants" with severe injuries including amputations.

The morgues at both hospitals had run out of space, the witnesses told Amnesty.

In mid-March, the United States began an intense, near-daily military campaign against the Huthis after they had renewed threats to attack vessels in the vital Red Sea and Gulf of Aden shipping lanes.

The campaign ended with a US-Huthi ceasefire agreement earlier this month.

The Huthis, who control large swathes of Yemen, began firing on Israel and Israeli-linked shipping in November 2023, weeks into the Gaza war triggered by an attack by the Yemeni rebels' Palestinian ally Hamas.

Amnesty said it had analysed satellite imagery and footage from the site of last month's strike on Saada, in Yemen's north.

The group said it was "unable to conclusively identify a legitimate military target" within the targeted prison compound, citing Huthi restrictions on independent investigations.

"Any attack that fails to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects on the one hand, and legitimate military targets on the other, even within the same compound, constitutes an indiscriminate attack and a violation of international humanitarian law," Amnesty said.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Israel said Monday it will "take control" of the whole of Gaza, where rescuers reported more than 50 killed in Israeli strikes as the military pressed a newly intensified campaign.

After more than two months of a total blockade, the World Health Organisation issued a stark warning on the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip, saying "two million people are starving".

Under mounting pressure to lift the blockade it imposed on Gaza on March 2, Israel has announced it would let limited aid into the besieged territory and said a first delivery of "trucks with baby food" would enter Monday.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited "practical and diplomatic reasons" for the resumption, while the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said it had been approached by Israeli authorities about the resumption of aid.

In southern Gaza, the Israeli military issued an evacuation call to Palestinians in and around Khan Yunis city ahead of what it described as an "unprecedented attack".

The call came after the military announced it had begun "extensive ground operations" in an expanded offensive against Hamas militants, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war.

Gaza's civil defence agency said 52 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Monday across the territory.

Netanyahu, in a video posted on Telegram, said that "the fighting is intense and we are making progress."

"We will take control of all the territory of the strip," the Israeli leader added.

The UN's OHCHR rights office decried actions that are "in defiance of international law and tantamount to ethnic cleansing", citing the latest attacks, displacement, the "methodical destruction of entire neighbourhoods" and denial of humanitarian aid.

Netanyahu on Monday said that Israel "will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped", justifying to his hardline supporters the decision to resume aid.

"We must not let the population [of Gaza] sink into famine, both for practical and diplomatic reasons," Netanyahu said, adding that even supporters of Israel would not tolerate "images of mass starvation".

Famine risk 

Israel said its blockade was aimed at forcing concessions from Hamas, while UN agencies have warned of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.

"Tonnes of food is blocked at the border, just minutes away", World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesussaid.

"The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid."

The Israeli foreign ministry said that "trucks with baby food" would enter Gaza on Monday, and that "in the coming days, Israel will facilitate the entry of dozens of aid trucks".

Last week US President Donald Trump acknowledged that "a lot of people are starving", adding "we're going to get that taken care of".

Israel's far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvirargued against any resumption of aid, saying on X that "our hostages receive no humanitarian aid".

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also of the far right, defended the decision, stressing no supplies would be allowed to reach Hamas.

"This will allow civilians to eat and our friends in the world to keep giving us diplomatic protection," he said.

Israel's military said on Monday it had struck "160 terror targets" in Gaza over the past day.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said troops aim to "encircle" some areas, "get the civilian population out of the way, and then fight Hamas".

'Like apocalypse' 

Khan Yunis resident Mohammed Sarhan told AFP that Gaza's main southern city "felt like the apocalypse" on Monday.

"There was gunfire coming from every apartment, fire belts, F-16 warplanes and helicopters firing," he said.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee earlier called on Gazans in the city and nearby areas to "evacuate immediately".

"From this moment, Khan Yunis will be considered a dangerous combat zone," he said on social media.

AFPTV footage showed a helicopter over the city, while at Nasser Hospital, a young boy in a tracksuit was being treated as two other boys, both barefoot and bleeding, sat on the floor.

Further north in Deir El Balah, Ayman Badwan mourned the loss of his brother in an attack.

"We are exhausted and drained -- we can't take it anymore," he told AFP.

Gaza's health ministry said Monday at least 3,340 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 53,486.